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George MacDonald quotes

“I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.”

Before J.R.R. Tolkien, before C.S. Lewis, there was George MacDonald (1824-1905), Scottish pastor and author who was a forerunner to those most famous fantasy writers. He was friends with the creator of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, and greatly influenced the work of Tolkien, Lewis, W.H. Auden and Madeleine L’Engle. He is best known for his book The Princess and the Goblin. “I write, not for children,” he wrote, “but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.”

Fantasy story pioneer George MacDonald provides this Sunday’s God Quotes…

“Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.”

“Doing the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans.”

“It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another.”

“All that is not God is death.”

“There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.”

“If we will but let our God and Father work His will with us, there can be no limit to His enlargement of our existence”

“To love righteousness is to make it grow, not to avenge it. Throughout his life on earth, Jesus resisted every impulse to work more rapidly for a lower good.”

“What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give yourself the least trouble about. Everything He gives you to do, you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for what He may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next.”

“One of my greatest difficulties in consenting to think of religion was that I thought I should have to give up my beautiful thoughts and my love for the things God has made. But I find that the happiness springing from all things not in themselves sinful is much increased by religion. God is the God of the Beautiful—Religion is the love of the Beautiful, and Heaven is the Home of the Beautiful—-Nature is tenfold brighter in the Sun of Righteousness, and my love of Nature is more intense since I became a Christian—-if indeed I am one. God has not given me such thoughts and forbidden me to enjoy them.”

“Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin.
The only vengeance worth having on sin
is to make the sinner himself its executioner.”

“I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He thought of you first.”

“A Baby Sermon-
The lighting and thunder, they go and they come: But the stars and the stillness are always at home”